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Shipstar

Science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) continue the thrilling adventure of a human expedition to another star system that is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system the human ship is to colonize.

Bowl of Heaven

In this first collaboration by science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths…and it’s on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship.

Crashlander

Crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer has long been one of the most popular characters in Known Space. Now, for the first time ever, Larry Niven brings together all the Beowulf Shaeffer stories - including a brand-new one - in one long tale of exploration and adventure! Plus - an all-new framing story that pulls together all of Beowulf Shaeffer's adventures and allows Shaeffer and his family to make a clean start at life once and for all!

Red Tide

Loosely based on Larry Niven's 1973 novella Flash Crowd, Red Tide continues to examine the social consequences of the impact of having instantaneous teleportation, where humans can instantly travel long distances in milliseconds. This is a theme that has fascinated the author throughout his career and even appears in his seminal work, Ringworld, where the central character celebrates his birthday by instantly teleporting himself to different time zones, extending his birthday.

Fleet of Worlds: 200 Years Before the Discovery of the Ringworld

Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at Human-Puppeteer (Citizen) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacks is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Legacy of Heorot

Best-selling science fiction superstars Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle combine their talents with those of Steven Barnes in an extraordinary adventure of humankind’s first outpost in the farthest reaches of space. Light years from Earth, colonists land on a planet they name Avalon. It seems like a paradise - until native creatures savagely attack. It will take every bit of intelligence, courage, and military-style discipline to survive.

Flatlander

Gil 'The Arm' Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN police force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate, his detective skills second to none, and his psychic powers - esper sense and telekinesis - were awesome.

Now you can hear all the classic stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected in one volume for the first time - plus, an all-new, never-before-published Gil Hamilton adventure!

A World Out of Time

After more than two hundred years as a corpsicle, Jaybee Corbell awoke in someone else’s body and under threat of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell bided his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core.

Dream Park

A group of pretend adventurers suit up for a campaign called "The South Seas Treasure Game". As in the early Role Playing Games, there are Dungeon Masters, warriors, magicians, and thieves. The difference? At Dream Park, a futuristic fantasy theme park full of holographic attractions and the latest in VR technology, the players get as close as possible to truly living their adventure. All's fun and games until a Park security guard is murdered....

Footfall

They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star. The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods.

Escape from Hell

Allan Carpentier escaped from hell once but remained haunted by what he saw and endured. He has now returned, on a mission to liberate those souls unfairly tortured and confined. Partnering with the famous poet and suicide, Sylvia Plath, Carpentier is a modern-day Christ who intends to harrow hell and free the damned. But now that he's returned to this Dantesque inferno, can he ever again leave?

Starship Liberator: Galactic Liberation, Book 1

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

Building Harlequin's Moon

The first interstellar ship, John Glenn, fled a solar system populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology, and rife with political dangers. The John Glenn’s crew intended to terraform the nearly pristine planet Ymir in hopes of creating a utopian society that will limit intelligent technology, but by some miscalculation they have landed in the wrong system.

Inferno

After being thrown out of the window of his luxury apartment, science-fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of Hell. Feeling he's landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante's road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the nine circles of Hell, led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures.

World of Ptavvs

A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Since humans have recently developed a time-slowing field and found that one such field cannot function within another, it is suspected that the "Sea Statue" is actually a space traveler within one of these time fields. Larry Greenberg, a telepath, agrees to participate in an experiment: a time-slowing field is generated around both Greenberg and the statue, shutting off the stasis field and revealing Kzanol.

Ringworld

Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven's novel, Ringworld, is the winner of the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmars, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.

Rendezvous with Rama

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence.

A Gift from Earth

Plateau, a colony in the Tau Ceti system, was settled by humans some 300 years before the plot begins. The colony world itself is a Venusian type planet with a dense, hot, poisonous atmosphere. It would be otherwise uninhabitable, except for a tall monolithic mesa that rises 40 miles up into a breathable layer in the upper atmosphere. This gives the planet a habitable area about half the size of California.

Vanguard: The Genesis Fleet, Book 1

Earth is no longer the center of the universe. After the invention of the faster-than-light jump drive, humanity is rapidly establishing new colonies. But the vast distances of space mean that the old order of protection and interstellar law offered by Earth has ceased to exist. When a nearby world attacks, the new colony of Glenlyon turns to Robert Geary, a young former junior fleet officer, and Mele Darcy, a onetime enlisted marine.

Lucifer's Hammer

The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival--a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known....

Headlong Flight: Star Trek: The Next Generation

An exhilarating thriller from best-selling author Dayton Ward set in the universe of Star Trek: The Next Generation, following Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew as they explore the previously uncharted and dangerous Odyssean Pass.

Battle Cruiser: Lost Colonies, Book 1

One starship will either save Earth or destroy her. A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the solar system. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet.

The Mote in God's Eye

The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".

Publisher's Summary

Doctor Toby Glyer has effected miracle cures with the use of nanotechnology. But Glyer’s controversial nanites are more than just the latest technological advance, they are a new form of life - and they have more uses than just medical. Glyer’s nanites also have the potential to make everyone on Earth rich from the wealth of asteroids.

Twenty-five years ago, the Briareus mission took nanomachinery out to divert an Earth-crossing asteroid and bring it back to be mined, only to drop out of contact as soon as it reached its target. The project was shut down and the technology was forcibly suppressed.

Now, a much, much larger asteroid is on a collision course with Earth - and the Briareus nanites may be responsible. While the government scrambles to find a solution, Glyer knows that their only hope of avoiding Armageddon lies in the nanites themselves. On the run, Glyer must track down his old partner, William Connors, and find a way to make contact with their wayward children.

As every parent learns, when you produce a new thinking being, the plans it makes are not necessarily your plans. But with a two-hundred-gigaton asteroid that rivals the rock that felled the dinosaurs hurtling toward Earth, Glyer and Connors don’t have time to argue. Will Glyer’s nanites be Earth's salvation or destruction?

Oh my God! The first half of this book is dialog between two characters that you can't bring yourself to care anything for. They spend all of the time telling the story instead of showing the story. I felt like the two characters were about as interesting as sock puppets. The narration is barely passable -- I'll give him three stars for a good effort. I am Nivan fan and read many of his books, so I was really excited when this book was released.

This doesn't even qualify as classic Sci Fi because the technology just doesn't wash. I got half way through the book and decided I really didn't care what happens. You know what? When I finished it, I shouldn't have. I give this a hard pass, don't waste the listening hours like I did.

Characters, dialogue and plot all seem both one dimensional and forced.I forced myself to bear with it through to the end, and it turned out to be as disappointing and predictable as I feared.To sum it up without giving too much of the plot away, this novel is Atlas Shrugged with nanobots, IN SPACE!

Has The Goliath Stone turned you off from other books in this genre?

I never did like Randian dross, sci-fi or otherwise.

What three words best describe Jeff Woodman’s voice?

Could be worse

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Both sadness and disappointment

Any additional comments?

Listening to this is less painful than nailing your schlong to a coffee table, but not by a wide margin.

loved the story, but there may be some who don't get nanotechnology. too bad as that is integral to the story. plot somewhat predictable but a few twists kept it interesting. all in all, worth the time.

What did you like best about The Goliath Stone? What did you like least?

I liked the subject matter of nanotechnology and the medical aspects covered.

What was most disappointing about Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington ’s story?

The book basically rambled on without a clear direction and the end was non-conclusive and abrupt.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes.

Was The Goliath Stone worth the listening time?

Not really.

Any additional comments?

I am an avid fan of Larry Niven and have read many of his books (some with Jerry Pournelle) such as Footfall, Dragons of Heorot etc. Of course not every book has the same consistency of appeal to every reader but I was really interested as this was a new writing partnership to me with the promise of fresh input. I was really disappointed.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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